Tag: ray bradbury

Coffee Log, Year 2, Day 223

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Hi.

Coffee:  Maxwell House Master Blend, Office Coffee

I want to thank a couple people for tipping me a coffee: S&C, old friends from the open mic, respected colleagues, much appreciation. I’m reminded of that time about a year ago where you had a Halloween party in your backyard, we watched The Conjuring on your projector, carved pumpkins, drank beer. It was colder that year, more like fall. The wind in the trees was more mysterious than the movie.

An M – another dear friend I got to know when she entered the life of an old buddy, and whose wedding I got to attend when she finally married him. I’m flattered, and glad my words meant something to you.

I’ll use the tips to try something special this weekend – a different sort of brew, something I’ve never written about on here before. Good or bad, I’ll love every sip of it because of the warm thoughts it was brewed on, and I’ll be sure to give you all my best attempt at a review.

As for the rest of today’s Coffee Log, I’ll keep it short:

A large brown dog came into the bank at the end of the day. He was walking a woman who’d be shorter were he to stand on his hind legs. A sheepdog, the pup was scruffy and long-legged, and when he got to the table where we keep the deposit slips he decided to lie down.

Sometimes you see something and automatically have a name for it: I called him ‘comfortable.’

A couple minutes later, in comes another customer, one of our regulars, and she sees Mr. Comfortable and wants to pet him. The short lady speaks up “Please don’t get his attention.” There’s a pause, a thickening, confrontation, and the lady follows with “He’s a service dog.” That’s the end of that story. A couple minutes later, Mr. Comfortable takes his partner by the leash and leaves. The deposit-slip table looks vacant without him.

Don’t bother a dog when he’s working, I guess.

Currently Reading: Queen, Suzanne Crain Miller

Support Relief for Family Suffering at the Border  – RAICES DONATION CAMPAIGN

The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless. We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam.

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Coffee Log, Year 2, Day 150

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: Maxwell House Master Blend, Office Coffee

The sky got so dark today it felt like we’d made a pillow fort, hiding under until our parents got home.

Thunderstorms – there’s nothing quite like them to jog you. You could be buried in the deepest office and still hear the sky crack and clouds shake open. And watching the rain come down reminds you what it takes to grow.

We rode out the storm for three hours this afternoon while the power went in and out. The bank got dark then brighter. I was helping a woman open a checking account and tried to hurry. No luck. When we were done, she was facing the full faucet of the storm.

Now it’s cooler. The rain scooped the heat out. And we’ve already forgotten a week of hundred degree weather, content to chirp with the frogs all evening, reveling in something comfortable, and that’s okay, as long as we wake up tomorrow without forgetting what it as like to be bone-dry and half-starved, that the world is still just one week away from roasting, that we’re responsible, like it or not.

Currently Reading: Queen, Suzanne Crain Miller

Support Relief for Family Suffering at the Border  – RAICES DONATION CAMPAIGN

Why the Egyptian, Arabic, Abyssinian, Choctaw? Well, what tongue does the wind talk? What nationality is a storm? What country do rains come from? What color is lightning? Where does thunder go when it dies?

Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

Coffee Log, Day 278

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Hi.

Coffee: French Roast, Trader Joe’s Brand

I’ve got this unintentional habit where I wake up about two hours after falling asleep with my heart pounding and a sense that the night is going to swallow me. I have to get up, drink water, turn some lights on, sometimes get dressed. But you see some things in the bleak night.

It’s breathless, the apartment. My roommates have their doors closed. There’s green and blue on the walls from the little lights on our router. It’s the kind of place you’d think a cat could fall in love over but we don’t have a cat.

I let it stay black in the kitchen. I take a glass from memory and pour water. The faucet’s loud. It’s bigger than the stream outside. I take the water to the window while my heart calms down. I look at the blacked-out lots, the cars, the couple windows that are still on. Who else is up? I don’t want to share – it’s a small slice of time.

When you’re back in bed after something like that, the dreams come different: simple and easy and colorful and pleasant, like they’re lying to you.

Novel Count: 14,161 words

Currently Reading: Autumn, Ali Smith; Cherry, Nico Walker

Support Relief for Family Suffering at the Border – RAICES DONATION CAMPAIGN

It’s a long way back to sunset, a far way on to dawn, so you summon all the fool things of your life, the stupid lovely things done with people known so very well who are now so very dead…

Ray Bradbury


Coffee Log, Day 241

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Hi.

Coffee: Colombian, Starbucks Brand (grocery store bought, a gift)

I went to a friend’s house last night and carved pumpkins. It’s a nice place in a nice neighborhood. The backyard has two old trees. After the carving, we watched The Conjuring on their projector outside. The wind sat in for the movie. In the spooky parts, it was hard not to look up at the moon.

I’ve been having restless dreams. Late night drives, anxious faces, I’ve got somewhere to be but can’t get there. Typical stuff, but it sticks with me when I wake up. Today, I tried writing but it wasn’t doing. Then I tried submitting to journals but it wasn’t doing. I spent a morning in the sun spilling from my bedroom window watching internet streams. And it was peaceful and I guess that’s okay.

I can’t write much tonight. I’ve got to take the trash out. R has it ready. We had friends over, ordered pizzas, the boxes are too big for the cans. Best I can tell, the night’s a cold one. I have shorts on. Cross your fingers for me.

Currently Reading: Autumn, Ali Smith; Cherry, Nico Walker

Support Relief for Family Suffering at the Border – RAICES DONATION CAMPAIGN

“Miraculously, smoke curled out of his own mouth, his nose, his ears, his eyes, as if his soul had been extinguished within his lungs at the very moment the sweet pumpkin gave up its incensed ghost.” – Ray Bradbury, The Halloween Tree

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Coffee Log, Day 124

garethlivesay1 Comment

Hi.

Coffee: Fair Trade Ethiopian Medium Dark, Harris Teeter Brand

I saw graves in Pittsboro. The sun had gotten behind a cloud. NPR was running a story about an NFL player turned activist. Lunch was over. It had ended a while ago for the grave-dwellers.

What gets preserved…

In the late nineties, my parents built an annex. My mother’s father was dead; my grandmother needed somewhere less familiar to live. I watched the construction. The blond wood, the wet foundation. I practiced taekwondo routines when the workers weren’t around. The skeleton boards were Hong Kong.

Eventually, the annex was a home; then it was a grave when cancer got her; then it was storage. It was storage for a long time. Fifteen years – spiders replaced by other spiders – in 2013 life went south for me, I moved back home. I remember clearing the boxes. I made a new space in the annex and lived there two years in my early twenties.

In the end, though, when the centuries strip America, her blond particle boards will decay. In the luckier places, the foundation might stick.

Maybe you’ll see my footprints punching ghosts.

Currently Reading:

History of Wolves, Emily Fridlund (2017 Man Booker Prize Shortlist)

Support Relief for Family Suffering at the Border – RAICES DONATION CAMPAIGN

“We’re going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we’re doing, you can say, We’re remembering. That’s where we’ll win out in the long run. And someday we’ll remember so much that we’ll build the biggest goddamn steamshovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in it and cover it up.” – Ray Bradbury, Farenheit 451
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Coffee Log, Day 57

garethlivesayLeave a comment

Hi.

Coffee: Organic Sumatra Blend, Trader Joe’s Brand

Writing from my phone. I’m in my car with the AC running. Technology’s amazing, huh?

I’ve been taking notes and writing paragraphs on my iPhone while taking walks. I remember thinking how great it would be to write spontaneously, grab an idea as soon as it gets you. This was before smart phones and the only options were pen and paper. I don’t like writing raw scratch. I tend to forget where I’m going between pen-down and pen-up.

Currently Reading:
The Pardoner’s Tale, by John Wain

Fund the Coffee Log 🙂 – https://ko-fi.com/livesaywriting  

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” – Ray Bradbury

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